Dear NZ – let’s just send poor kids straight to jail

45
2

images

Dear NZ

Why don’t we just save time and send poor kids straight to jail?

I mean, we hate poor children right? We blame their parents for being hungry (despite welfare purposely calculated so that beneficiaries are hungry), we blame parents for their kids freezing to death in cold houses (despite privatising state houses and subsidising slum lords) and we blame poor kids for underachievement (despite under resourcing public education).

Here’s the latest evidence that poverty is robbing children of a future in the country that once hilariously considered itself egalitarian…

Poverty causing children to fall behind
Children living in poverty in New Zealand are at least six times more likely to struggle with maths than students from wealthy backgrounds, a new report has found.

The ranking was one of the worst in the developed world, with only Ireland, Israel and Poland doing worse.

The report from the OECD, Low-Performing Students: Why they fall behind and how to help them succeed found students from the poorest 25 per cent of households in New Zealand were more than six times more likely to be low performers in maths compared with those in the top 25 per cent.

Our figure was five times that of Australia.

30 years of neoliberalism has destroyed talk of hegemonic structures within society, individualism trumps society and success is self generated as is failure. It’s a culture of ego, I succeed, not because the playing field is tilted in my favour, but because I’m so brilliant. The flip side of this is that if you fail, that’s also your fault.

How much denial are we in? Jamie Whyte was allowed to plagiarise a column claiming poverty doesn’t really exist in NZ in our largest daily newspaper and John  Key claimed the reason the poor fail was because they all love drugs.


quote

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

We have a political class who feed neoliberal mythology via an unquestioning mainstream media to an electorate who love the juicy taste of self congratulatory smugness while sneering at those who suffer on the periphery of society.

We are a soulless tiny minded nation with all the maturity of a can of coke and intellectual depth of a Mike Hosking rant.

002

45 COMMENTS

  1. With all these kids being fed breakfast at school Monday to Friday, what happens on the weekend do the parents let them starve. Worst of all, what happens to these kids over the school holidays. Do they starve for 4-6 weeks. I hope not.

    • ACT is a party of personal responsibility and seems to be the only party in the centre of the political spectrum that keeps the extremes honest, so I would have to agree with Brian of Mt Wellington. We have worked with Labour in the past and continue to work with National now and in the past, to reduce the interference of the state in the lives of people.

      There wouldn’t be poverty, if Labour in the 80’s had implemented our original plan of a 20% flat tax and 20% GST. Reducing company tax to 20% and personal income tax to 20% and GST at 20%, would have allowed incredible wealth creation right into the lower tiers of society.

      Certainly ACT should be pushing for 20% GST and a flat tax rate of 20%, with whichever party will work with them after the election in 2017.

      However, ACT is likely to wait until after the election, as it did with Charter Schools policy, to introduce the last planks of monetary transformation of 20% flat company and personal tax and 20% GST.

      And then poverty will be a thing of the past.

      • There’s only one problem with all that. We are all speculators now. All the new income comes from the Ponzi scheme. And the bottom half of the population is sick to literal death of paying for it

      • You can take your 20% tax policy and jam it where the sun doesn’t shine – into your cold, stoney heart.

        What ACT and See-More are, are opportunist disgusting thieving bastards, that have robbed New Zealand of its soul, the assets it uses to create social safety nets, and its care for others. Trickle-down economics was how it was sold to the naive socialists in Labour in the 80’s after 8 years of Muldoonism. Transfer of wealth and power away from the state and into the hands of the 10%, that own 90% of the wealth is how it has progressed in the last 8 years..

        Hoskings and Key, your pin-up boys are cold-skinned and cold-hearted parrots of the corporate takeover that is the TPPA. Corporate muppets – we know what wares you have on your barrow of greed and reject it..

      • “There wouldn’t be poverty, if Labour in the 80’s had implemented our original plan of a 20% flat tax and 20% GST. Reducing company tax to 20% and personal income tax to 20% and GST at 20%, would have allowed incredible wealth creation right into the lower tiers of society. ”

        The purest of pure fantasy. What total bollocks – ideology without a shred of supporting evidence, and plenty of evidence exists to the exact contrary.

      • Honestly, I have suspected for a while that David Seemore is a satirist, because his comments are always ludicrous, illogical espousing of failed right-wing ideology. He simply can’t be serious in what he states.

        Regarding Brian of Mt Wellington’s comment: this is a fantastic example of what Martyn eloquently described as “toxic masculinity” i.e. a cocktail of smugness, heartlessness, “I’m alright, Jack” mentality, with shots of fanatic almost lustful adherence to John Key, willful ignorance, malice, miserliness, and withholding of giving out an iota of compassion and empathy, mixed in for good measure.

        • What do you mean you suspect??? I’m amazed that anyone could not actually see him for one and I’m an Act party support and active member. I think the fact you can’t see what he is doing is hillarious.

          • Um, Gosman, I stated that I do think his views are too patently stupid to be serious. Why do you infer from my post that I can’t see what he is doing? Is this an example of an ACT Party member / supporter’s “logic”? lol

            • No, you stated you suspected. You shouldn’t suspect in this case. You should know he is putting it on as it is very obvious.

              Regardless about your views the others who respond to him as if he is serious highlights my point.

                • No, I’m pretty confident that this person is just attempting to reflect what they believe ACT stands for from a left wing perspective. Why they are doing this escapes me because all they seem to be doing is winding up fellow lefties.

      • And then poverty will be a thing of the past.

        And pixies will dance in the streets; the Angels will sing choruses of hallelujahs (though not as well as Leonard Cohen); and Elysium Fields await us…

        The good receive a life free from toil, not scraping with the strength of their arms the earth, nor the water of the sea, for the sake of a poor sustenance. But in the presence of the honored gods, those who gladly kept their oaths enjoy a life without tears, while the others undergo a toil that is unbearable to look at. Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus’ road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing, some from splendid trees on land, while water nurtures others. With these wreaths and garlands of flowers they entwine their hands according to the righteous counsels of Rhadamanthys, whom the great father, the husband of Rhea whose throne is above all others, keeps close beside him as his partner
        — Pindar, Odes, (c. 522 – c. 443 BC)

        That has been a Party political broadcast, courtesy of M. Mouse, ACT Party.

      • Oh, you mean more trickle down theory, that hasn’t worked for the last 30 years, which fails to take into account that the wealthy generally hoard money they don’t need, not spend it.

    • Brian of Mt Wellington – just pray to whatever gods you worship that you yourself will never have to rely on someone with as little apparent compassion as you exhibit.

      It will be your undoing.

  2. Dead right , Martyn ,… and epitomized by Oliver Hartwich as exposed on Chris Trotters most recent article today.

    Oliver Hartwich , economist and cheerleader for the New Zealand Institute – aka the Business Roundtable .

    The same treasonous bunch who brought to you and lobbied for Rogernomics , and such things as student loans/debt and the idea that education is the preserve of the wealthy- except they weren’t that blatant of course, they knew they would of been lynched if they were…

    And why bring up education?… because for many prior generations people from poor family’s could do something about their circumstances to lift themselves.

    Now… chances are they’ll just be thrown inside with the full blessings of Collins and Key backed up by their hateful supporters.

    Neo liberal’s and their agenda .

    Passive aggressive fascism by stealth.

    • Very right wild katipo.Read todays Wake up New Zealand,it is the best explanation of what governments and elites are up to and how they control absolutely.
      This is a must read for everyone before its to late ,please everyone read it and pass it on ,very very important if we want to be free and not enslaved. .

  3. Trickle down lies and deception, started in 1984, started this descent into callousness and sneering antipathy towards working men and women.

    Inequality reigns supreme and a sneering hatred for the less fortunate pervades this once egalitarian paradise – Godzone. All gone on the altar of greed and neoliberal lies.

    I loathe what the nasty, selfish bastards like Prebble, Douglas, Banks, Richardson, Brash and now Key and his odious ilk have done to this once-wonderful country.

    Time for a revolution and reversal of the neoliberal, self-centred thinking.

  4. Don’t forget National’s attempt at eugenics by encouraging poor women to get sterilised. And since poor people in general are nothing more than a drain on society, I’ll always be a strong advocate for WINZ Euthanaisa Clinics.

    Or we could just get National and its monkeys out of power and start returning NZ to a more egalitarian society.

    • And sterilize those who wanted to practice eugenics on the poor and use their genitals for protein powder to feed to the cattle…

      Yes…neo liberals with no balls…

      Mind you … the size of their balls probably wouldn’t be sufficient to feed our cattle for very long…we would have to outsource for more neo liberal balls to feed our national herds…

      So typical of the neo liberal… all bluster and bravado yet when comes to delivery ?

      Just an empty ballsack.

      • ” and use their genitals for protein powder to feed to the cattle…”

        Whoa! Careful there. HUGE risk of passing on Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease.

    • Irony generally doesn’t work in written form unless it’s very, very overstated and almost explained.
      Your first two sentences are contradictory and your third sentence reinforces your first sentence. Because your average reader is unable to detect irony in your second sentence (if indeed it IS ironic) he has chosen to see your ironic comment as the true meaning of your post.
      This is shown by your very low rating.
      Don’t use irony; say what you mean and you won’t get misunderstood…

  5. ACT started all this neoliberal shite when it infiltrated a naive Labour Party in 1981-4. SInce then, like Ridley Scott’s Alien, ACT has skulked around in the dark corners, promoting the acidic bile of its neoliberal message wherever it could.

    ACT haven’t had a lot of luck recently, what with Brash, Hyde, and Jamie Whyte plagiarising his own callous brand of British neoliberal attitudes to the poor.

    Jamie should ask David Seymour to implement Jonathon Swift’s Modest Proposal. It wouldn’t be plagiarising Swift, it would be using 400 year old tried and true ways of inhibiting poverty and offering a cheaper way to deal with the poor in New Zealand, rather than sending the poor to jail as you ironically suggested..

    After all, ACT is the Party committed to reducing intervention by the state.

    • No…I must disagree with you…

      I see the castrating and powderisation of the neo liberals balls as the only way to give a lift to our dairy operations.

      I will admit though that there wont be a vast quantity available due to the lack of subject material at hand to enhance the protein intake of our national herds but at least we would get a laugh listening to their high pitched squeaky voices in parliament.

      Which , to be honest ,… isn’t really that different at the current point in time in parliament listening to John Key , …which would lead us to assume that the neo liberals in fact never had any decent balls to offer in the first place….

      Neo liberals…an abject and total failure in practice, economics and balls.

      Such a terrible waste to contemplate or even bother trying to humour…

      Nah…lets continue feeding the cattle commercial protein supplements… they’d starve, otherwise… poor beasts…

  6. NZ is now slipping as a desirable place to live with crime and falling standard of living.

    The deficit is ballooning at over $100 billion and we are being driven onto the bankruptcy rocks by a drunk National Government who are spending money only on the rich and overseas companies who are setting up here to make a killing off subsidies and gifts’ of favours in the commercial advantage assistance matters.

    Rail is being starved to death and all Government agencies have been told to tighten their belts.

    Two days ago the Police admitted they are running out of money to attend burglaries, so we are being driven to the cliffs, so we need to get rid of these creeps.

    • Look, CLEANGREEN , I’ve told you …the cattle are starving and they need protein for the winter…now we all know that the neo liberals have small balls… but this is a desperate situation…

      I suggest that we round up all the useless neo liberals ( which is all of them ) and along with branding them so we can keep them in a national herd that we can process and record ,… that we also provide useful cattlefeed using their minuscule powdered balls as winter cattle feed.

      Now I know your objections… that their balls wont be nearly enough to feed the national herd , and I sympathize with you at that point… but truly I cant think of a better way to use such a useless superfluous product as neo liberals balls , – and particularly when viewed in light of the neo liberals eugenics advocation of sterilization of poor women.

      Truly …there must surely be a use for these pathetic wretches I agree…. but,… alas… we have not yet found one.

  7. The lower socio economic sectors of society are a by product of this country’s economic policies of the last 30-35 years.

    Most people in society want to work and earn monies for their families, the neo liberal bullshit that people are lazy and don’t want to work is absolute crap.

    Neoliberalism has asset stripped NZ and placed that wealth in the hands of the 1% percenters, we have also lost our Cash Cows (State Assets} which generated funds for our social services.

    Neoliberalism has been a callous form of economics which has done nothing for the growth and development of NZ.

  8. No one likes poverty, whether you’re on the right or the left. The left blames the right arguing their policy increases poverty. Fair enough.

    So what is the policy direction the left would take us in? I think but I’m not sure it would go like this:

    Increase govt spending – 35% to 55% As a proportion of GDP
    Top tax rate of 60% above 100k
    Middle tax rate of 50% above 75k
    Capital gains tax of 33%

    This would buy you: free health care, free education, across the board benefit increases of 25%, 10,000 new state owned houses, reduction of GST to 12.5%

    Reduce dairy industry by 50% to support clean water
    Reintroduce protectionist trade policy- withdraw from TPP, China, WTO.
    Nationalise big business – electricity, telecoms, etc

    The major problem you have with introducing a policy platform like this is that the people earning above 75k will refuse to be taxed and will either vote this down or they will vote with their feet and immigrate.

    The massive disincentive to work would hugely reduce the size of the pie to reallocate and the end result would be a new Argentina in the South Pacific. Inequality would decrease but we would all be suffering not from relative poverty but from absolute poverty.

    • [ ‘ The massive disincentive to work would hugely reduce the size of the pie to reallocate and the end result would be a new Argentina in the South Pacific. ‘ ]

      Ermmm… Im sorry to have to break it to you ,….but that immigration has already occurred… the workers and salary earners who could immigrated to Australia where there isn’t such a thing called the Employment Relations Act.

      Not so long ago there were around 600,000 ex Kiwis living in Australia… and while many were temporary …many were not . And a conservative estimate of 350,000 have left these shores permanently.

      One quarter of a million people. One quarter of a million lost votes.

      Which , as an example of the gravity of this situation … if one was to say 350,000 CEO’s had uplifted to Australia because of shitty wages and conditions – you would be having heart failures and there would be commissions of inquiry and all sorts of acrimonious political arguments breaking out…

      But , – because they are largely expendable workers and middle tier managers and professionals who found the shit wages and conditions on offer here prevented them attaining any real quality of life … we say ..”Oh well,…who cares?”…” We can make up the difference with our unbridled immigration policy’s”…

      And pay them the minimum wage when they get here and then expound to them the joys of the low wage economy…

      Sound cool?

    • So plenty of down votes here. Is that because you don’t think my potential far left policy programme is correct or because you honestly think it will work?

  9. This and other governments do not run the country for the benefit of the people, if it did, there would be equal pay for equal work for everyone, including the “politicians” thus eliminating their pay hikes and perks. The term “the government has decided” would not exist. The term “we have agreed” would be applied. This country, since the first colonialist set foot on the shores, has been run from The City of London and jointly since the end of WW ll with the American Industrial Complex. With the signing of the TPPA we are now firmly within the grasp of the American Military Complex. What we see is the Project for the New American Century taking place in the Pacific.
    http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/new-american-century/
    But these “projects” need money and at the moment we are witnessing the take-down of their phony monetary system and this government relies heavily on their phony fiat money. The take down of the monetary system is proceeding very quickly and in its place will be gold-backed currency controlled by the Chinese. When this is finally in place, it is my opinion that we will see major changes within the governance of this country, which will see the living standard of all raised to a level never seen before. Whether or not this government is around at that time remains to be seen to be believed.

    • so putting all the anti-american comments to one side… your preferred outcome is a new currency backed by the chinese which will magically lift living standards to a level never seen before.

      By what magic does introducing a new currency create wealth/raise living standards? There be some pretty potent juju in that magic.

  10. I believe Australia has similar poverty rates to us. How does that explain why we have rates five times worse in terms of outcomes in Maths?

      • I think, given her secondary role as simpering cheerleader for Key’s ideology, her proper name is “Heck, Yeah! Parrotter”.

    • I think the brainwashing of bogus and erroneous neo liberal statistics has something to do with the poor Arithmetic in this country…

      The figure’s just never add up… and you know what they say… make a mistake in complicated mathematical theorem and it just walks its way all through the problem and affects the solution…

      Therefore if we get rid of the neo liberal wretch from teaching their error in the first place we might stand a better chance of getting things right.

    • How does that explain why we have rates five times worse in terms of outcomes in Maths?

      Let’s see…

      You could default to the Right’s usual Blame Game;

      1. It’s the fault of the previous Labour Govt

      2. It’s the fault of “welfarism” and “bludging benes”

      3. It’s the fault of “dem mowries” and the “Treaty grievance gravy-train bludging industry”

      Take your pick.

      Oh, and if Auckland is mentioned, you can have a fourth option;

      4. It’s the fault of the bloody RMA!

      Have fun!

Comments are closed.